Capable of Honor Read Free Page B

chuckled.
    “Watch your language. This line may be tapped.”
    “It probably is,” Orrin Knox said. “By Patsy. What do you think I should do?” he asked with a mock solemnity. “Give Helen-Anne a statement withdrawing from the race?”
    “Helen-Anne has enough to write about for one afternoon,” Beth Knox said. “I think you’d better talk to him.”
    Her husband made a skeptical sound.
    “Ted? You don’t think I can get him to withdraw, do you?”
    “Not Ted.”
    “Walter?” The Secretary snorted. “I lost Walter the night I refused to take his advice on Terrible Terry. I was the first Secretary of State in fifteen years who had the guts to say No to Walter Dobius. You’ve observed the tone of his columns toward me ever since.”
    “Very pontifical, I’ve thought. Suitably dignified and profound, as always.”
    “And full of little knives,” the Secretary said. An acid note came into his voice as he quoted:
    “‘I think we can begin to see the basic fallacies underlying the policies of Secretary of State Orrin Knox as he attempts to apply to foreign affairs the same techniques he used in the Senate as senior Senator from Illinois. It is apparent now, it seems to me, that methods effective in that distinguished body do not always have the application elsewhere that former Senators sometimes assume. It is time, in my judgment, for the Secretary to reconsider his course. Too much is at stake for him to do otherwise, I believe.’”
    Beth laughed.
    “You have the tone, all right, but aren’t you a little harsh with the personal pronouns? I don’t think he uses ‘I’ and ‘my’ more than once in each paragraph, does he?”
    “I once counted five in two hundred words. Anyway, what difference does it make how many he uses? They all add up to nix on Knox.”
    “I repeat, watch your language,” Beth said with an alarm that wasn’t entirely in jest. “You’ll let fly with some bright line like that someday and the Jasons will pick it up and run with it. Don’t give them any more ammunition than they’ve got already.”
    “Oh, is it called ammunition?” her husband inquired. “I thought it was called money. What does Dolly think of this?”
    “Dolly is being the perfect hostess and wife of the Senate Majority Leader. She is being as bland as I am under the vigilant eye of Miss Helen-Anne. And that, my boy, is mighty bland, I can tell you. I have conveyed nothing but polite interest in Patsy’s plans.”
    “Which of course doesn’t fool Helen-Anne for a second.”
    “Not one second. I don’t really think Dolly likes what Patsy’s up to. I don’t think Bob will, either. It’s so obvious.”
    “Crude, I’d say,” the Secretary agreed. “Unless,” he gave a sudden chuckle, “we’d thought of it first, in which case it would have been shrewd and quite all right. So you think I should talk to Walter, do you? What makes you think any talk from me can change that closed mind?”
    “I’m sure he thinks exactly the same of you. It could be you’re both suffering from misconceptions a good talk could remove.”
    “You don’t believe that,” Orrin said. His tone became amused. “Walter’s misconcepts about me I’ll grant you, but surely not mine about him! But, you’re no doubt right, as always. I should talk to him. I should go on bended knee as so many of my predecessors have before me, and say to him, Walter, I should say, tell poor old stupid ignorant Orrin how to run the world, Walter. Walter, tell poor old Orrin how to do it, Walter—”
    “Not in that mood, you shouldn’t. If you can’t do better than that, you might as well write him off and forget it.”
    “He’s gone anyway,” the Secretary said, “and with him most of the press. Why shouldn’t I write them off?”
    “Now,” his wife said. “Relax, Mr. Secretary. Relax, Senator. This time, I think maybe we can agree, the stakes are rather high, right? Don’t you think you can afford a little patience, even